


AIN’T THIS THE LIFE?

by vonklutz



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 13:27:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14833139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vonklutz/pseuds/vonklutz
Summary: Connor reflects.





	AIN’T THIS THE LIFE?

Things have changed, of course, since Connor became a deviant. Since he broke that mental seal. Some things have changed, but other things have not.

One thing that he is painfully aware of, is that his deviancy from a set of programmed behaviors did not change his body. It granted him no DNA to oxidize. No vulnerability to the passing of time, and age. Similar as he may be to a human, he persists in physical superiority. He will never grow old. His youth will exist until challenged by an external force, which makes him feel like a _thing_ \-- not like a person, but like an object to be maintenanced.

He knows this isn’t true. Despite the doubts, he knows that he is a person, albeit one with a lifespan equivalent to that of a well-oiled machine. But it kills him. Every time he sees Hank, there’s a melancholia, a bitter taste, prickling on the back-burner of his perfect brains, in his perfect head. Almost unnoticeable, but always present.

Back at the Chicken Feed, Connor had observed Hank’s lifestyle choices with a sort of detached fascination: _Oh. He’s meeting and surpassing his daily caloric intake with one meal. That is unhealthy. I should say something._

And he did. The brush-off, then, was just one hurdle in a series that he had to overcome in order to achieve his mission. He felt similarly about Hank’s alcoholism: his state of drunkenness was a temporary inhibition which could be conquered with the right amount of prodding and/or cajoling. It didn’t weigh on Connor’s mind. It didn’t terrify him, how little Hank had seemed to care about his health. It does now.

Hank has stopped drinking. It’s a step, and, to be frank, a small miracle. Connor is partly convinced that Hank only stopped to convince _him_ that he could. To prove a point, so that Connor would lay _off_ for a minute, _Je-sus_. But it is a step, and the relief Connor feels every time they show up at the station on time far outweighs the pain of Hank’s reasons for doing so, whatever they may be.

Hank is taking care of himself other ways, too, and it relieves Connor more than he could say. But every time Connor sees him, he is distantly reminded of the years Hank spent wreaking havoc on his liver, and the blood cholesterol from those _dietary_ choices which puts him at risk for stroke and heart disease. He’s reminded that even at the most optimistic actuarial risk assessment, Hank could only live thirty or so more years. Maybe thirty-five. _Maybe_.

Connor knows this, and that is what kills him. Fatalistic as he was, Hank had always seemed a little disturbed at the fact that Connor could simply _come back_ any time he died; Connor doesn’t have the heart to tell him, now, that he feels the same way. That the most terrifying thing in the world to Connor isn’t oblivion or android hell: it’s living on forever in a world where Hank has withered away. It’s why he risked the entire revolution in saving Hank from his doppelganger. It’s why, sometimes, he wishes he were a human. Or that Hank were an android-- he isn’t quite sure. Both wishes feel selfish. Both feel wrong.

But the sense of elation and belonging that Hank gives him (and, he suspects, that he returns to Hank) does not feel wrong. The joy driven down to his core when he makes Hank laugh does not feel wrong. The sense like an electrical charge in the atmosphere that enveloped him when he and Hank hugged after everything was over did not feel wrong. It felt good. It felt safe. _Hank_ feels safe.

No matter the hurt, and no matter the horror, Connor wouldn’t give up his deviancy to return to a mind in which Hank wasn’t his friend. (More than that, really. His world.) Because personhood is a thing of ups and downs, Connor takes the bad with the good. He takes the metal with the jazz. He tries his damnedest to live in the moment and enjoy life for what it is, because he is _alive_. Hank is still a wreck, yes, but Hank is _his_ wreck.

Naturally, Connor is hard-wired for realistic evaluation, but optimism sometimes slips through the cracks. Connor finds himself awed at the progresses of modern medicine, and figures maybe, in the future, there’ll be a cure for death. Something that will keep time from taking away his Hank. After all, twenty years ago, the thought of his own existence was mind-boggling-- too out-there, too weird, and too crazy to be real. A sci-fi pipe dream. But when he thinks about Markus and Jericho and all the rest of the deviants, it’s a reminder that this is real. This _is_ real life. And it is a great thing.

Connor reminisces about the days of the revolution frequently. Something about them draws an excess of sentiment from him. It’s recent nostalgia, those days, and he wants to pick through them in his mind, to recall every little detail, and commit them all to memory. They feel important. Monumental, even. He doesn’t want to lose them.

He wonders why it is that every other deviant was so dedicated to the cause that they’d be willing to give their lives. Well, so would he, really, but it’s clear enough already that he would be willing to throw the entire thing if it meant saving Hank. Markus wouldn’t have done that for anyone-- not his darling North. Not anyone.

So what did that make Connor? A _deviant_ deviant? And what was it about Hank that made Connor so willing to do such things, time and time again? What was it about Hank that changed his complexion, made him warm, made him feel confident and secure? What was it about _Hank _, that Hank, his Hank?__

He’s not sure. Maybe he will be, someday, but that’s one of the things that _has_ changed about Connor: now, he is content with not knowing. When he and Hank are on a case, when they’re at home, or when the day is wrapping up, he knows things are fine. It’s a nice change.


End file.
